The falls of St. Anthony are at the foot of Fifth street in Minneapolis. The water does not come leaping over, but pours over easily and smoothly in one solid sheet. On either bank of the river are located the largest flouring mills in the world. Not a drop of the old Mississippi that comes sweeping over the falls but pays tribute in furnishing power for these mills. Huge iron turbine wheels that twenty men could not lift are turned as easily as a child rolls a hoop.
FALLS OF SAINT ANTHONY.
On the site of these mills long ago were camped the Dakotas. They had just come down from another village where one of the men had married another wife and brought her along. The woman was stronger than the savage in wife number one, and when the Indians broke camp and packed up their canoes and goods for the journey to the foot of the falls, the forsaken wife, taking her child, leaped into a canoe and rowed with a steady hand down stream toward the falls. Her husband saw her and called to her, but she seemed not to hear him and she did not even turn her head when his comrades joined him in his cries. On swept the boat, while the broken-hearted wife sang her death-song. Presently the falls were reached. The boat trembled for a moment, then turning sideways, was dashed to pieces on the rocks below.
Minnesota was the land of Gitche Manitou the Mighty and Mudjekeewis. Mackinack was the home of Hiawatha and old Nokomis. There Gitche Manitou made Adam and Eve and placed them in the Indian Garden of Eden. One day Manitou or Great God made a turtle and dropped it into Lake Huron. When it came up with a mouth full of mud, Manitou took the mud and made the island of Mackinack.
As we steamed up the Mississippi to the falls of Minnehaha we had a good view of the bank swallows in their homes in the sandstone banks along the river. The action of the air on sandstone hardens a very thin crust on the surface, and when this is scraped off one can easily dig into the bank. The swallows are geologists enough to know this and hundreds of them have dug holes in the perpendicular walls. Here the chattering, noisy little cave-dwellers fly in and out all day long, flying up over the cliffs and away in search of food or resting in the shrubbery which grows in the water near by. It is a pretty sight to see the happy little fellows skim the water. It makes you wish that you, too, had wings.
At the entrance of Minnehaha park we were greeted by a merry wood thrush, whose voice is melodious beyond description. There he sat on a swaggy limb not ten feet from us. We were familiar with his biography and recognized him by his brown and white speckled coat. We advanced cautiously. We had come six hundred miles to see him and I think he knew it, too, for when we were so near that we could have taken him in our hands he recognized our presence by nodding his graceful head first this way, then that, and sang on. We spent some ten minutes with him, then “bon voyage” he sang out as we passed on.
FALLS OF MINNEHAHA.
Three miles above Minneapolis are the beautiful falls of Minnehaha, Laughing Water. These falls are beautiful beyond the power of my pen to describe. The water does not pour over, but comes leaping and dancing, like one great shower of diamonds, pearls, sapphires and rubies. The vast sheet of water sixty-five feet high reminds one of a bridal veil decked with gems and sprinkled with diamond dust.